Engineers
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: "Engineer." A term used to describe the mala'kak in the 21st century, and huragok in the 26th. A term that led to a bit of confusion...


_A/N_

_Should be noted that I wrote this before _Prometheus _was released, so I now know that my take on events in this is incorrect. Still, this being a crossover, I'm willing to cast canon to one side though._

* * *

**Engineers**

"Well, I'd say you were lucky…but then again, I'm not much of a liar these days."

Elizabeth Shaw remained silent. She didn't smile, she didn't snort, she didn't do anything that might indicate that she'd heard what Catherine Halsey had said. All that was left for her to do was sit, shiver and drink the cup of grade-B coffee that the people of this facility had provided her.

"Freezer burn…" Halsey commented, apparently understanding and accepting the reason for her silence. "Can only imagine what it must be like after this long."

"You…really…don't…want…to…to…to…"

"Know?"

Shaw nodded and took a sip of the coffee, fighting to keep the fluid in her.

"You know, you should really be resting."

Shaw knew that. But she didn't care.

It wasn't that Shaw was completely oblivious to her situation. Having placed herself in stasis on LV-223, she'd anticipated that she might have had to wait a decade at the most for a ship to pick her up. The _Prometheus _was one of a kind, but surely someone, somewhere on Earth would come looking for her. Surely Weyland Industries wouldn't have kept the secrets of FTL hidden only for them to be rediscovered in the 23rd century. Surely she wouldn't have to wait nearly five-hundred years for a team to visit the world and bring her out of hypersleep. Surely she'd wake up on Earth, not on an orbital station situated near some kind of giant hula hoop.

The archaeologist sipped the coffee again. Her stomach objected, but her brain told it to shut the hell up.

"I imagine you might have a lot of questions…" Halsey said.

Shaw nodded.

"Well, let's see…it's the year 2553, and-…"

"Earth?" Shaw rasped. "Is Earth…safe?"

"Last I heard, yes," the doctor answered quizzically. "Why? I mean, it certainly suffered at the hands of alien invasion, but-…"

"Aliens?" Shaw asked, the coffee forgotten. "They…did they…the Engineers…"

"No…mainly Brutes," Halsey said, her gaze now matching her tone. "Jackals, Drones, Hunters, Grunts…got the Elites on our side at least…course things are going to hell with Parangosky kicking the ant hill, but-…"

"You lost me at Jackal," Shaw said, lowering her gaze back to the coffee.

The beverage wasn't telling her anything apart from the fact that coffee quality hadn't changed in the last five-hundred years, but the good doctor's words had. Earth had suffered from alien invasion apparently, but unless her terms all somehow referred to the Engineers, it hadn't been at the hands of the beings she and the crew of the _Prometheus _had encountered. For all that had changed, at the least, Earth was still around. And with any luck, the Engineers weren't.

"Surprised that you know all this," Halsey said.

Shaw looked back up. "What?"

"Oh, you know, about Engineers and the like," the scientist said, looking at her with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. "I mean, first contact with the Covenant was in 2525, Engineers only confirmed in 2552-…"

"Wait!" Shaw exclaimed, standing to her feet and dropping her beverage. "Engineers? They're around? They're part of this….this Covenant?"

"Well, some are. Got some on our side though. Ever since Onyx, we-…"

"No!" Shaw yelled. "You can't trust them! They want to destroy us! They lured us in! They-…"

"In fact, one should be bringing me my own lunch right now."

Shaw opened her mouth to scream, but no words came out. He throat was sore and blistering, as was the rest of her body from freezer burn, but still…an Engineer…after all this time…

"Denser Than You, you're late."

Shaw blinked. Halsey just sat there. And in the room's doorway, some squid…thing…just hovered there. Hovered there and let out a stream of whistles.

"I don't care, you're still late," Halsey said.

The whistles continued, this time higher in pitch.

"Huh. Well the same to you."

Shaw remained silent as her lunch arrived.

Right now, in the revelation that two species of "Engineers" existed in the universe, there didn't seem anything left to say


End file.
